In reality, the money arrived quickly, though not from the expected source. Yesterday afternoon was the day Jing's Dad had arranged with Uncle Sun to finally collect the repayment. As expected, Uncle Sun once again played the poor card, his act perfected over a decade. In short, he claimed he had no money to pay, that circumstances had changed, that he was waiting on another payment himself.
Frustrated and desperate, Jing's Dad went to Uncle Sun's company and then to his home to find him, but the whole family refused to open the door. They'd vanished as a unit, it seemed, unavailable by phone and absent from their usual haunts. Jing's Dad finally saw the true, cowardly face of a friend he'd known and trusted for over twenty years. Seeing the disillusionment settle in her father's eyes, Jing Shu felt it was finally time for her to step in more directly.
With the 200,000 yuan from selling the family car, Jing's Dad was still 100,000 yuan short to settle the urgent renovation costs that were due. Furthermore, after finishing the villa's remodeling, at least another 200,000 would be needed for the final payments. Helpless and cornered, Jing's Dad swallowed his pride and asked her grandmother for a loan of 200,000 yuan. To his surprise, he found that her three aunts had each decided to lend 100,000 yuan as well. That same day, a total of 500,000 yuan was transferred into his account, significantly reducing the immediate financial pressure.
Jing's Dad rarely asked his biological mother for money unless it was absolutely necessary. He didn't want to strain the delicate family relationships further or revive old resentments.
Back in the 1960s and 70s, life in the countryside was hard, and the traditional preference for sons was strong. Jing Shu's grandmother had three daughters first. Under societal pressure, she named them Jing Pan, Jing Zhao, and Jing Lai, names that literally meant "Awaiting a Brother," "Summoning a Brother," and "Bringing a Brother." Under the weight of such names, she finally had a son, she finally gave birth to Jing's Dad. They named him Jing An, meaning "Peace," which finally brought the family relief.
Grandma Jing had previously favored Jing's Dad heavily, often hiding the best treats for him alone. Her aunts, as children, inevitably found out, causing simmering tension and jealousy that lingered into adulthood.
When the aunts married, the family was still poor. Grandpa Jing could only afford to give each a simple set of handmade wooden furniture as a dowry. When Jing's Dad married years later, the family's fortunes had improved. Grandpa Jing took out all his savings to pay a hefty down payment on an apartment for the young couple in Wu City.
Such a huge gap in treatment naturally left the aunts feeling bitter and overlooked.
Later, when the aunts' own children were born, Grandma Jing gave each newborn a pair of modest silver bracelets, regardless of gender. But after Jing Shu was born, as the first grandchild of the favored son, she received an ornate, solid gold longevity lock.
In times of genuine poverty, favoring sons over daughters was, sadly, understandable in that generation's context. But when life improved and then the only granddaughter was also visibly favored, the aunts resented both Grandma Jing and Jing's Dad.
Thankfully, over the years, everyone's life gradually improved, and Grandma Jing consciously became much fairer in her affections and gifts. Because of this history, Jing's Dad didn't want those carefully repaired relationships strained again over something like borrowing money.
Unexpectedly, Grandma Jing still informed the three aunts about Jing's Dad needing to borrow money. And even more unexpectedly, the three aunts actually contributed. Whether it was out of a sense of familial obligation or genuine love for their younger brother, whether they were reluctant or willing, Jing Shu noted it down. She remembered this favor. After the apocalypse began, she'd find a way to repay them with food and supplies, at least shielding them from the worst of the natural disasters. It was a debt she'd honor.
Repay kindness, retaliate against enmity, never feed the ungrateful. Eating well and living securely every day would become Jing Shu's future motto, her core philosophy.
Once Jing's Dad transferred her the 200,000 yuan portion, the next day Jing Shu went out to a beverage wholesaler. She bought 400 boxes of Nongfu Spring mineral water, the 550 milliliter bottles, 12 bottles per box, spending 7,200 yuan. She also bought 100 boxes of the 1.5 liter bottles for another 5,400 yuan.
Bottled mineral water was easy to carry and could be drunk directly. It was more convenient than relying on filtered tap water and would be less conspicuous during any future escape in the chaos of the apocalypse. Jing Shu was preparing for the very long term, knowing that clean, packaged water would remain a desperately scarce commodity.
She also purchased two wholesale boxes each of various drinks, honey pomelo tea, coconut juice, Xiang Piao Piao milk tea, Wang Lao Ji herbal tea, Red Bull energy drink, cola, Sprite, and orange juice.
On a nostalgic whim, she even bought ten boxes of Wahaha AD calcium milk, a sweet, simple taste from her childhood that she could never forget, a tiny luxury for her future self.
Jing Shu followed the delivery truck back to the villa entrance. After the delivery people had unloaded the towering stacks of boxes and left, she used the Cube Space to quickly and quietly move the life saving water and drinks to the empty second floor study room. She stacked the boxes neatly to fill the room from floor to ceiling, then locked the study door and also the master bedroom door for good measure.
Any room that now held supplies was kept securely locked to prevent the renovation workers from accidentally seeing the staggering volume. All the interior doors were solid wood, heavy and impossible to shoulder open, fitted with grade A locks that only professional locksmiths could defeat.
After ticking off the beverage quantities on her detailed phone list, Jing Shu took a moment to check the villa renovation progress with a critical eye. She felt a swell of satisfaction.
The tempered glass ceiling and perimeter walls were completed perfectly, forming a seamless shell. They were built to withstand the insect rain she knew would come in the second year of the apocalypse. All the villa's original windows had been replaced with triple layered insulated glass for maximum warmth and soundproofing.
The right side underground water storage and filtration system was fully built and concealed, with raised soil beds for crops planted on top. The circulation system connected all the villa's water pipes and the two large tanks on the third floor roof. It could run an automatic filtration cycle for low contamination tasks like washing vegetables and bathing, but drinking water was strictly reserved for the bottled mineral water and the roof tanks, which filtered water three times before it reached a dedicated kitchen faucet.
The decorative pond was also finished, and the front yard chicken coop shed was built. The boiler room and coal storage room at the back were completed, and the new doors opened and sealed correctly. The expanded kitchen cabinets were installed, only the final touches and the upstairs greenhouse transformation remained.
Captain Chen estimated full completion in three more days, with one additional day for final cleaning and adjustments.
Back in her Cube Space, Jing Shu focused on two major developments. First, the quail chicks and ducklings had finally hatched over the past few days. She numbered the new arrivals with tiny leg bands and left the mother hens and ducks to continue incubating the next batch of eggs, which she had marked as Number 1 lineage. She noted that when the original birds grew too large or aggressive by her standards, she planned to reduce their Spirit Spring feeding after a seven day observation period, while she herself began cautiously drinking a heavily diluted version.
Jing Shu decided she'd feed the original Chicken Number 1 undiluted Spirit Spring until it died of natural causes, to truly test the long term effects and limits. Number 1 had managed the flock so well, with such fierce intelligence, that she found she couldn't bear to kill it for soup, even for an experiment.
Second, the rabbits had gotten pregnant and given birth with startling speed. Jing Shu had noticed their strangely swollen bellies just yesterday and saw the tiny, hairless babies today. The accelerated reproduction rate made her imagine plates of Kung Pao rabbit meat already calling to her from the near future.
Jing Shu returned home later than usual that evening. Opening the apartment door, she didn't smell any food cooking, nor anything burnt. Instead, a strong, cloying and nauseating perfume hit her nostrils, mixed with the sound of multiple noisy, overlapping voices.
"Lanzi, you know it's not easy for me, a single mother with two kids. I want this school district apartment just to register my younger child for the good elementary school. You can continue to live in it, I won't kick you out. Just sell it to me cheap, and we can consider the difference as ten years of rent paid in advance," said a sharp faced, professional looking woman in an OL dress and blazer.
"Yes, Lanzi, the department director heard you wanted to sell, so she hurried over here today to bring you the money personally. This is showing great face for you."
"The director is finally speaking to you directly about this. You should sell it cheaply. It'll help your future career prospects at the unit."
Everyone in the small living room talked over each other, creating a din of pressure.
Su Lanzhi was surrounded in the middle of the sofa, looking flustered and embarrassed. "Director, we're selling because we have an urgent need for cash. The price you're offering is too low. The current market price for this apartment is 1.4 million. Our unit, fully furnished and well decorated, is listed at 1.3 million. If you only offer 1 million, we can't possibly consider the remaining 300,000 as rent and still pay to rent out our own home. It doesn't make sense."
"Lanzi, you can't look at it that way. You're not considering the long term benefits of having the director owe you a favor," one of the other women chimed in, a colleague Jing Shu vaguely recognized.
Jing Shu covered her face with one hand just inside the doorway. Reborn into a world that seemed full of nothing but opportunists and users, she listened silently for a moment. Were these people really her mother's superiors and colleagues? If the apartment was sold to this director under such pressure, wouldn't they come knocking again after the apocalypse, demanding more, claiming obligation? If she didn't sell, they clearly wouldn't stop pressuring her mother. People literally forced trouble upon themselves and others.